If your goal is to search on first name, then you might not want to use an array anyhow.... 

my %people = ();
while (blah) {
   ## do something
   $people{$fname}{$lname}++;
}

my $search_term = 'John';
if (exists $people{$search_term}){
   # do stuff.
}

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In reply to Re: easy way to extract a hash from an array? by beachbum
in thread easy way to extract a hash from an array? by rmexico

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